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After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (Paperback)

by John Darwin (Author) "It had encouraged a remarkable movement of people, trade and ideas around the waist of Eurasia, along the great grassy corridor of steppe, and Mongol..." (more)

4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Penguin (6 Mar 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0141010223
ISBN-13: 978-0141010229
Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 27,838 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Piers Brendon, The Independent, 4 May 2007

'In this marvellously illuminating book, John Darwin accepts much
but not all of the revisionist analysis. With an awesome grasp of global
history, he demonstrates that the continental peninsula of Europe was
peripheral for most of the time since the 14th-century conquests of
Tamerlane...Darwin sustains an intricate thesis with enormous panache.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

John Gray, Literary Review, April 2007

An astonishingly comprehensive, arrestingly fresh and vivid
history of the forces that underlie the world we live in today, After
Tamerlane sets aside ideologies in which European power - sometimes seen as
liberating and at others as diabolically oppressive - is the driving force
of modern development...After reading this masterpiece of historical
writing, one thing is clear. The world has not seen the last empire. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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First Sentence
It had encouraged a remarkable movement of people, trade and ideas around the waist of Eurasia, along the great grassy corridor of steppe, and Mongol rule may have served as the catalyst for commercial and intellectual change in an age of general economic expansion.3 Read the first page

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	83% buy the item featured on this page: After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 4.2 out of 5 stars (9) �7.67
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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

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4 star:		(3)
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4.2 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch!, 6 Sep 2007

By	Grand Dizer - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire (Hardcover)

This is a very ambitious book. It tries to examine the rise and fall of global empires over 500 years. The concentration is on the Ottoman, Mughal, Safavid (though quite slim on them), China, Japan, France, Britain, USA and Russia - with much briefer mention of other European powers such as the Dutch, Germans (Nazi Germany is given some page space) and the Beligians. Despite its great ambitions I think the book succeeds.

One way to describe this book is to call it the political version of Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel (but only for the last 500 years). Like GGS it looks into why certain states/nations/empires rise and why do others fall. GGS looks into the natural reasons and is detatched from political considerations (which is one of the many things that makes GGS so original). After Tamerlane concentrates far more on the political side and in this the author shows an impressively wide and deep knowledge.

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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly wide-ranging rereading of the history of empire, 26 April 2007

By	D. Winchester "atomic83" (Bushey, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire (Hardcover)

1492, Chris Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And so Europe conquered the world.

Or so we have been taught. What we've all forgotten (or ignored) is that there were other world powers. Before the British Empire, before the United States, there were the Ottoman, Chinese and Islamic empires that lasted far longer and had more influence than anything Europe produced.

Tamerlane was the last world-conqueror, a violent inheritor of Genghis Khan, whose empire ranged from Iran to China to Moscow. After his death in 1405, his empire fell apart and the modern world as we know it began to form. Princes in Muscovy began to take control of their neighbours; China's accelerated cultural progress began to stagnate; and Europe's sea-worthy nations began to extract wealth from their overseas conquests.

AFTER TAMERLANE is a fabulously balanced and wide-ranging revelation of world history of the past six hundred years, written by one of our preeminent historians. John Darwin is a true star. Up to now he has been too busy making other historians famous; now it's his turn. AFTER TAMERLANE reveals the seeds of the modern world; read this if you want to understand what fawned today's world events.

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tamerlane the Great CEO , 19 Mar 2009

By	John Fitzpatrick (S�o Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The title "After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires 1400-2000" obviously came from the publisher's marketing department rather than the author's mind*. Perhaps some marketing man can also explain why the spelling was changed from the more familiar "Tamburlaine" of Marlowe's play. Books with silly titles like "Men are from Venus and Women from Mars" or "Who Moved My Cheese" sell by the million so any unusual name (particularly if it has the magic word "Global" in it) stands a good chance of getting some publicity. Why not go further and rename it: "Tamerlane: the First Global CEO"?.

The book provides an interesting look at the rise of the main empires from the 15th century although whether they were as truly "global" as the author makes out is questionable. The book's main drawback is that the author is sounder on European matters, particularly the British Empire, and the rise of the US than on he is Asian or Middle Eastern matters.

This is shown in his sourcing which is entirely in English as far as I can see. Could anyone imagine an Asian historian daring to write a history of Europe or the United States without some knowledge of English and other languages? It would be interesting to hear the views of non-Europeans. The quotes in blurb on my copy are all from the UK.

Having said that, if you are interested in the rise and fall of empires then this is quite a good read.

*Another example of a book with a hyped-up title is "How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It" by Arthur Herman. This is, in fact, mainly a rather dry academic on the Scottish Enlightenment rather than the blustery self-aggrandizing title would make you assume.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars not perfect but pretty good
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